Faja lab focuses on biomarkers and executive functioning in autism

What makes children with autism tick, and how can we help them function better socially? That’s the focus of research in the lab Susan Faja, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The GAMES project seeks to build social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by building cognitive skills, specifically executive functioning. Through computer games and coaching, Faja hopes strengthen kids’ ability to plan, inhibit behavior, manage complex or conflicting information and shift flexibly between different rules or situations. She believes executive function training will help children with ASD better understand other people’s perspectives and act more appropriately in social situations.

Faja is also interested in biomarkers that indicate whether interventions are working, including brain EEG recordings and eye tracking. She’s using these tools to learn what visual information kids with ASD are attending to and how their brains respond to social information.

“I think the thing that really makes my lab unique is that we are looking at both neuroscience and intervention at the same time,” says Faja. “We take information from the neuroscience literature about how the brain develops, and we look for ways to apply that to developing new treatments.”